(Republican) hope springs eternal? Or is the conventional wisdom to be quietly swept under the new and old media rug again as what new and old media pundits suggest won’t happen happens? Two new tidbits perhaps explain why President Barack Obama has decided to delay his year-end Hawaii vacation until health care reform definitively clears the Senate.
1. The Weekly Standard Editor Willliam Kristol, who is a must-read and must-watch because his suggested lines of attack often become the actual lines of attack used by Republicans, says health care reform might still be stopped due to two reasons:
First: the reaction to the deal-making. One friend e-mails, “uncharacteristically, I’m getting calls from relatives who want to talk about all the unseemly deals being cut to get the health bill through…that seems to have hit a nerve, as much as the price-tag.” That’s my sense too. Now combine the unseemly deals with Reid’s pathetic defense of them yesterday. According to Reid, “this legislation is no different than the defense bill we just spent $600 billion on.” As Dana Milbank points out in the Washington Post, “That would be the bill with more than 1,700 pet-project earmarks.” So when Reid says, “It’s no different than other pieces of legislation,” he’s giving up a lot—health care reform was supposed to be different. It was special, historic, a moral imperative, and so forth. If it’s no different, if it’s just another piece of cobbled-together legislation, why not kill this mess and start over?
Second: the issue Jim DeMint raised on the floor of the Senate last night. Why did the authors of the legislation want to specially protect the Independent Medicare Advisory Board by making it difficult for future Congresses to legislate in that area? Because the heart of the bill is the attempt to get control of our health care permanently in the hands of federal bureaucrats, who would allegedly know better than doctors and patients what’s good for them, and who would cut access to care and the quality of care so there’s more money left over for various big government liberal social programs.
Prediction: look for his argument to be repeated on talk shows, on blogs and in blog comments.
2. A new Quinnipiac University Polling Institute poll finds a wide margin of Americans are against the emerging health care reform plan and give Obama low marks on his handling of it.
As the Senate prepares to vote on health care reform, American voters “mostly disapprove” of the plan 53 – 36 percent and disapprove 56 – 38 percent of President Barack Obama’s handling of the health care issue, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
Voters also oppose 72 – 23 percent using any public money in the health care overhaul to pay for abortions, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.
American voters also disapprove 51 – 44 percent of President Obama’s handling of the economy and disapprove 56 – 37 percent of the way he is creating jobs. But voters favor 52 – 42 percent his plan to use $200 billion left over from the bank bailout for a new stimulus package to create jobs rather than to reduce the budget deficit.
Only 31 percent of voters say Obama’s policies will help their personal financial situation, while 37 percent say his policies will hurt and 30 percent say his policies will make no difference. Among voters in households where someone has lost a job in the last year, 37 percent say Obama policies will help them personally, while 37 percent say they will hurt.
Looking at the health care plan, independent voters “mostly disapprove” 58 – 30 percent, as do Republicans 83 – 10 percent. Democrats “mostly approve” 64 – 22 percent.
“As President Barack Obama’s numbers on health care have declined so has his margin over Republicans on whom American voters trust most on the issue,” said Peter Brown, Assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “In July he enjoyed a 20-point edge on the trust question, and that margin has been narrowing, to 45 – 40 percent today.”
This poll is in sharp contrast to the latest CNN poll. So choose the poll that most closely fits your bias and call that poll accurate, and say the other poll has flawed methodology..
UPDATE: And you still have to wonder if at the last minute the Democratic party’s liberal wing, particularly in the House, digs in its heels and refuses to go along with the Senate deal. If you go by how Democrats often work hard to pull defeat out of the slammed-shut jaws of victory, you’d say the Democrats themselves will sink health care reform — but there are signs that it may not happen in the House this time. Or will it?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.